Senate's gun control vote reveals new GOP divide

It pains me to congratulate the National Rifle Association, but the organization's aid to the U.S. Senate's defeat of background checks for gun purchasers was an impressive victory.

Clarence Page

It pains me to congratulate the National Rifle Association, but the organization's aid to the U.S. Senate's defeat of background checks for gun purchasers was an impressive victory.

Against common sense.

Although there is widespread disagreement over what constitutes "common sense," it's not unreasonable to assume that universal background checks - for which public support runs as high as 90 percent in some polls - fits the definition.

What's surprising is how quickly the high hopes for background checks collapsed.

Are the senators listening, many wonder?

Does American democracy work anymore?

After all, it is widely reasoned, if background checks are such a good idea for immigrants, why not for gun buyers? What better way to put a pinch in the flow of guns to people whose criminal backgrounds or mental health records indicate they should not have firearms?

Adding to the amendment's common-sense credentials were its two exemplary Senate sponsors, conservative Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia and even more conservative Republican Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

Both labored through weeks of negotiations to make the measure as palatable as possible to all sides.

Besides, even the NRA supported background checks in the 1990s, although the group worked hard to dilute the reforms at every turn.

But as Sandy Hook and other high-profile massacres in recent years fired up the public in favor of expanded background checks, the NRA fought against them.

The NRA doesn't just make noise or, backed by the firearms industry, donate barrels of campaign cash.

It also mobilizes voters. Lawmakers pay attention to that.

In general, citizens who oppose gun limits are much more likely to get off the couch and vote for - or against! - a candidate on that single issue than those who favor limits.

Unable to come up with good reasons why background checks used to be a good idea but aren't now, the opposition makes stuff up.

There's the argument, for example, that background checks don't do any good because criminals will find other ways to buy guns.

Sure.

But making guns harder for dangerous people to purchase is the whole point.

Then there's the slippery slope argument: Background checks will lead - "inexorably," says Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas - to federal gun registration, which paranoid opponents see as no more than a pistol shot away from gun confiscation.

In the end, arguments like that, questionable as they may be, were enough to prevent the Manchin-Toomey amendment from winning more than 54 votes.

Yes, that's a majority of the 100-member Senate, but not enough to reach the 60-vote threshold set by Senate rules.